Berkley Bedell Blog

Solution, Serious and Silly

As evidenced by the U.S. House of Representatives passage last Friday of a tremendously meaninful bill and the Senate’s anticipated action, serious attention at the country’s highest level is finally being paid to climate change.  The bill’s “cap and trade” policy is an important and reasonable step in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.  There will be economic incentive that should cause producers of energy from coal and natural gas to tackle reducing their pollutants. 

 

However, federally funded crash programs to figure out how to capture and store CO2 from coal and natural gas are still necessary.  If the problem of CO2 emisssions can be solved, for example, the proven technology of liquid fuel from coal, as used by the Germans at the end of World War II should be reexamined and expanded upon. 

 

And already on the table is T. Boone Pickens program that will quickly give us 20 percent of our electricty.  To implement it he is asking for three things.  First, a 10-year extension of the renewable Production Tax Credit so that he and other manufacturers can do long-range planning and investment.  Second, transmission corriders such as were put in place for highways when President Dwight Eisenhower called for an interstate highway system in the 50s.  Third, fuel for the federal government’s 200,000-vehicle fleet should be switched from gasoline to natural gas.  Congress and the president should act on requests such as these from all energy entrepreneurs.

 

There is also ongoing silliness.  To wit, a recent comment in the Minneapolis-based StarTribune to an article about Minnesota summers becoming hotter if global warming is not controlled:

 

                  I always wanted to move south for my retirement years.  Now the south

                  is moving north instead.  Thank God for global warming.  It’s sure a lot

                  better than the global cooling threat of the 1970s.  Just think, only 35

                  years ago, the scientific “community” was convinced that we were about

                  to enter a period of global cooling…

 

Whether an attempt to be funny or not, the comment pretty well illustrates the foggy thinking and misinformation that must be dealt with as we try to solve a serious problem—Jim Frost.  

                   

 

Solution, Three

In 1715 the British Parliament offered a huge prize for the invention of a way to measure a ship’s longitude; the result was successful, saved countlesss shipwrecks and helped revolutionize world trade.  In the 1780s the French Academy offered a prize for a process to extract sodium hydroxide from sea salt.  From 1908 to 1915 there were three dozen aviation prizes offered including the Orteig, which Charles Lindberg won for flying solo across the Atlantic Ocean.  And the Great Chicago Auto Race of 1895 with its $2,000 prize for the winner is credited with giving birth to the American auto industry. 

 

The tradition continues with the contemporary X Prize Foundation.  Burt Rutan’s Scaled Composites Tier One project won the first, the Ansari X Prize, and was awarded $10,000,000 for launching a reusable spacecraft into space twice within two weeks.  X Prizes for genomics, automotive innovation and lunar rover landing craft have also been announced.

 

Our government should institute similar competitions to foster interest and speed up the development of energy saving items, polution reducers and alternative energy production. 

 

Areas in which major awards could be offered to individuals, companies or research institutions for automotive innovation include:

 

·         The first to sell 100,000 cars that get an average of at least 60 miles per gallon of gasoline or diesel in normal driving conditions.

 

·         The first to sell 100,000 American mid-size diesel plug-in autos that meet all environmental pollution requirements and get at least 80 miles per gallon.

 

·         The first that produces 200,000 fuel cell (hydrogen) powered automobiles that use no liquid fuel.

 

·         The first to sell one million gallons of liquid fuel produced from switch grass, poplar wood or other biomass material.

 

·         The first to produce and sell 100,000 batteries capable of enabling a mid-size car to travel at least 50 miles percharge on strictly battery power in normal driving.

 

For coal, this award:

 

·         The first operation of a commercial coal-fired electric utlity plant that operates with 90 percent less CO2 emissions than current coal fired plants.

 

For nuclear:

 

·         The first operational nuclear power plant where spent fuel cannot be processed into nuclear bomb material.

 

·         The first to develop a commercially viable process for removing radioactivity from spent nuclear fuel.

 

And in general:

 

·         The first to sell a specific number of each of a number of advanced energy efficient appliances; items such as refrigerators, washing machines, dryers and dishwashers.  Goals and specifications should be well beyond anything in use today.

 

Awards for achievenment in the fields of energy and environment would certainly encourage development but they also would address an area in which our government has let us down—bringing attention to the problem to the extent necessary for members of the general public to get involved.

 

Solutions are not merely a personal virtue, as former Vice President Cheney famously said in 2001.  They should be a matter of general concern and government action—Berkley Bedell.

 

The Solution, Two

 

To start tackling the problems caused by our use of petroleum products:

 

·         CAFE standards should be quickly updated and enforced.

 

·         There should be a policy of “freebates,” where a tax would be placed on the purchase of a new car with a fuel efficiency less than a certain figure, say 45 miles per gallon to start.  Rebates would be given to purchasers of cars with fuel efficiency over the figure.

 

·         The government should purchase a fleet of highly efficient cars and lease them at the same cost of owning an old-fashioned gas guzzler to persons who qualify because of low income or other circumstances.  The lessee would get a credit for getting rid of his or her old car and be given an option to purchase the new one.

 

·         A mandate should be in place for all large trucks to run on natural gas or clean diesel fuel.

 

·         Development of the use of hydrogen as an automobile fuel should continue.

 

·         The weight of cars should be reduced through the use of new steel and carbon-based sheet metal. 

 

·         Tax breaks for heavy vehicles such as those found in the 2003 Jobs and Growth Act must be eliminated (they allow the entire cost of an SUV to be deducted if it is used at least 50 percent for business in the first year).

 

·         The debate over offshore drilling  in Alaska or anywhere else should not get in the way of other solutions.  Even if the current ban is lifted, offshore wells would not produce oil before 2017.  And of course, drilling for and producing more oil does nothing to solve global warming—Berkley Bedell.

The Solution, One

The Alabama state constitution says, “the sole...object of governement is to protect the citizen in the enjoyment of life, liberty, and property...”  We traditionally have applied this to the need for a strong military but today must expand our interpretation.  Thirty years ago President Carter had already recognized the relationship between war and the energy crisis and knew that, like war, the crisis threatens each of the freedoms we hold most dear.  

 

We must reexamine Carter’s assessment in 1975.  We must accept Al Gore’s “inconvenient truth” that we are sitting on a ticking time bomb and might have only 10 years to avert global catastrophe.  For the effort we must enlist the help of every American consumer, industry, entrepreneur, non-profit organization, school, university, and research center, plus all the nations of the world along with their consumers, industries, entrepreneurs, non-profit organizations, schools, universities and research centers.

 

It is not something that can be done without national leadership; our government must take the lead. 

 

The first step should be to fund a clear analysis of the problem.  Immediatly doubling the federal budget for climate issues would cost less than one month in Iraq.  The Department of Energy should be reorganized and renamed the Department of Energy and Global Warming.  It must clearly document what has been done so far and what is possible in the future.  It must set challenging goals and become the leader in implementing the plans.

 

Because a major component of the problem is use of petroleum products, particularly gasoline, the first steps we take should deal with it.  More on this Monday—Berkley Bedell. 

You Can Look It Up

Information about energy and the environment is readily available in almost unlimited amounts online.  Below is a sample—time taken to review the following Web sites and articles will be well spent.

 

At http://www.kubby.com/GlobalStorming/index.html it is reported that, “According to a report issued by the United States National Academy of Sciences, catastrophic climate changes could plunge earth into an ice age in less than a decade.  The article has links to a number of important articles on Web sites such as those of NASA, Hubble and the British Broadcasting Company.

 

Nobel-prize winner and former vice president Al Gore’s position was summarized in a Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/) article on July 17, 2008.  He called on the nation and its new president to “deal with the climate challenge.”  His Alliance for Climate Protection estimated a cost of $1.5 trillion to $3 trillion to transform the U.S. to clean electrical energy and likened the challenge to our 60s effort to land a man on the moon but he called it, “… an investment that will pay itself back many times over.”

 

A must-read report was released in October of 2008 by the National Priorities Project.  It is titled “The Military Cost of Securing Energy, ” and may be found at http://www.nationalpriorities.org//Energy_Security/Energy_Priorities.

 

Showing what can be accomplished, Reuters (http://www.reuters.com/) had a story on Nov. 11, 2008, with the headline, “‘Solar City’ proves allure of sun’s energy in Japan.”

 

Also on Nov. 11, 2008, The Weekly Standard (http://www.weeklystandard.com/) had an informative, objective story, titled “Food for Thought,” about the possible inflationary effects of increasing the subsidy for ethanol production.

 

In its Nov. 12, 2008, edition, the Christian Science Monitor (http://www.csmonitor.com/) had an article that outlined, “a two-step plan that can…lead to an effective (nuclear) waste solution within eight years.”

 

The Minneapolis-based StarTribune (http://www.startribune.com/) reported on Nov. 28, 2008, that the water level of Lake Superior was 9 inches below its long-term average.

 

John Kerry, at The Huffington Post (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/) on Dec. 4, 2008, called on the country for support in overcoming “calcified conventional wisdom” and to take advantage of the opportunity for America to lead the world in dealing with climate change.

 

Burying CO2 emissions from the burning of coal deep below the earth’s surface and the resultant “clean coal” is analyzed, as the process relates to the recent economic stimulus, in an online Washington Post article March 5, 2009.

 

In another Washington Post online article, Feb. 15, 2009, experts are quoted verifying the headline, “Scientists: Pace of Climate Change Exceeds Estimates.”

 

In Minnesota, a legislative committee decided not to even consider nuclear as part of the state’s energy future with a vote against lifting its ban on new nuclear power plants.  The action was reported March 27, 2009, on the StarTribune Web site.

 

Yahoo Green (http://green.yahoo.com/) summarizes the interesting idea of painting rooftops white in a May 26, 2009 story. 

 

The Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson makes a case for spending stimulus package money on solar, wind and other sources of renewable energy rather than on the attempt to capture and store carbon in a story dated June 5, 2009.

 

And alarmingly, some scientists have speculated that global warming has affected wind speeds across the United States, possibly impacting wind generated power.  The article from June 10, 2009, is on the StarTribune Web site.

 

On Thursday we will write about solutions to the energy and environment problem—Jim Frost.  

Noteworthy First Steps

The automotive industry, in spite of its woes, has made a reasonable start on its way to an electric powered future.  Commuters will soon be able to plug their hybrid cars into an electric outlet overnight and drive to work in the morning using little or no liquid fuel.  This is a no-brainer that solves oil’s two major issues; cars will use less fossil fuel (and it will last longer) and pollution will be reduced.  It will work if we are able to deal with further demands on our electric grid to charge them up.  We also must develop smaller and more efficient batteries, be assured of a lithium supply for their manufacture and properly deal with their disposal.

 

The weight of a typical mid-size American passenger car is 3,500 pounds.  A study at a university in Spain funded by 17 European companies projects that weight could be reduced by up to 70 percent by using “advanced high-resistance” steel and carbon fiber.  It is estimated that reducing a vehicle’s weight by just 10 percent will result in a seven percent savings on fuel.

 

Even with inside the box thinking and while better technology is catching up with the need there are some good results with automobiles.  Our fuel economy standard has remained at 24 miles per gallon since 1985 but in Japan they get 45 miles per gallon and in China 37.  A Toyota Prius gets 50 miles per gallon and a Prius diesel plug-in is projected to get up to 100 miles per gallon.

 

Regular single pane windows have a R-factor of 0.9 and double pane windows with a quarter inch of air space a factor of 1.7.  Windows are now available with an R-factor of 10.  According to the Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory these windows will gain more heat than they lose even facing north in the winter.

 

Compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs) have been perfected and are gaining in public acceptance.  It has been said that,

 

                  If every American home replaced just one light bulb with a (CFL),

                  we would save enough energy to light 3 million homes for a year,

                  more than $600 million in annual energy cost, and prevent greenhouse

                  gases equivalent to the emissions of more than 800,000 cars.

 

Along with better windows and more insulation, CFLs can be added to existing home with relatively little expense.  For new construction, larger wiring systems and pipes will further reduce energy use and loss.

 

Affordable solar electric generation systems that work in virtually all parts of the country are now available.  They can be off-grid where they stand alone.  Or they can be on-grid where during peak usage and at night electricity comes from the power grid and when unneeded can be sold back.  Millions of homes and other buildings all over the country literally could become small power companies.

 

Solar power for heating homes, office buildings and factories is also becoming less expensive and accomplished easily and efficiently, particularly with new construction.

 

In their time the small windmills found on almost every farm in American did away with the unwelcome task of pumping water by hand.  When cheap rural electricty became available it in turn did away with the windmills.  But they are now back in huge new reincarnations, dotting the landscape in California, Texas, Iowa, Minnesota and elsewhere, already with enough power to serve at least 2.3 million American households. The technology has taken off—today’s turbines generate 120 times the electricity at one-sixth the cost of those from as recently as the 80s.

 

Eighty year-old energy entrepreneur T. Boone Pickens has a very lucid plan whereby wind facilities would produce 20 percent of our electricity, freeing up natural gas to be used as transportation fuel.  Calling the United States “the Saudi Arabia of wind power,” he is sure the combination will replace more than one-third of our oil imports and that it can be accomplished in 10 years.  But even a man with the zeal, experience and financial means of Pickens is stymied without help from Congress.

 

Finally, the Energy Policy Act of 2005 requires that 7.5 billion gallons of renewable fuel be produced and used in American by 2012.  Most of this is being accomplished through the use of the ethanol, an alcohol that is blended with gasoline at a level of 10 percent.  Most ethanol is produced from corn but the cost and energy used to grow and process corn, its limited supply, and the consequences of its loss as a food source limit its contribution to solving the energy problem.  A much greater potential exists in the production of alcohol from cellulose found in trees and grass.  The technology for commercialization of cellulose-produced alcohol is expected to be available within five years and it also is technically possible to make fuel from industrial waste and even garbage—Berkley Bedell.

 

Recognition and Leadership

Within both the world of traditional energy and the world of innovation there are options.  Sorting through the options and promoting global change is a task that only our national government can achieve. 

 

This was documented in a 1999 report titled prepared by the President’s Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology for President Bill Clinton:

 

                  It is in our fundamental national interest to greatly strengthen

                  international cooperation in energy innovation...Unless innovation

                  to increase energy end-use efficiency and to improve energy

                  supply technology is both rapid and global, world energy demand

                  is likely to soar...entailing higher consumer costs...greater oil import

                  dependence, worse local and regional air pollution, more pronounced

                  climate disruption...and bigger nuclear energy risks...And if the United

                  States abdicates leadership...while others forge ahead, it will cost

                  U.S. firms dearly in their share of the multi-hundred-billion-dollar

                  per year global market...most of which is and will remain overseas...

                  there is a window of opportunity—now open but closing fast—to

                  move the world off this troublesome path.

 

Specific warnings were sounded in the administrations of both presidents Carter and Clinton and in April, 2008, even George W. Bush finally came around after years of denial and suppressing information.

 

The bad news is that even with threats as imposing as any war, short of nuclear, that we are or could be involved with, our expenditures on climate related programs have been only one percent of what we spend on the military.  If nothing else, it should be recognized as a national security issue.

 

The good news is that with or without governmental support noteworthy efforts have been made.  Noteworthy, yes but given the enormity of the task and all that must be done the efforts can only be considered first steps.  We will write about some of them starting Thursday—Berkley Bedell.  

 

Dam It?

Expansion of another of our traditional sources of energy, hydroelectric, is less possible in the U.S. than in the rest of the world.  Although they damage rivers and have a high initial cost, once the dams necessary for hydroelectric production are built, it is renewable and relatively inexpensive.  China has 25 major hydroelectric projects, either proposed or already under construction to be on line by 2017.  The rest of the world’s countries have 11; the U.S. has none.  In our country, existing dams are nearly uncountable and hydroelectric power has been developed to the point that virtually all possible locations already have reservoirs and dams in place—Jim Frost.

Know Your Natural Gas and Nuclear

Ranking well behind coal and oil in CO2 emissions is natural gas.  Basically methane, it is used more and more in electric power plants and in homes for space heating and cooling, cooking, and heating water.  As of 2006 the U.S. has 5.5 trillion cubic meters of reserves.  Our natural gas will last 100 years at current production levels and in the world there are 172 trillion cubic meters of proven reserves—a 1,375-year supply.

 

Natural gas is relatively plentiful and very versatile.  Compressed natural gas is a proven fuel already used in 20 perecnt of U.S. public transit buses.  When burned it releases less greenhouse gases than coal, gasoline or diesel but its contribution to pollution is still significant and needs work.  Its other problems are transportation and storage; many existing U.S. pipelines are at or near capacity.

 

With nuclear power, like coal and natural gas, there really is no question about supply; there are virtually inexhaustible amounts of its necessary element, uranium.  The production of nuclear power starts with nuclear fission, the same process of splitting the nucleus of a uranium atom that causes the explosion of nuclear bombs.  In both cases the energy released is overwhelming, particularly when compared to the energy from any other source.

 

For power generation, the chain reaction of neutrons striking neutrons is controlled and used to heat water for steam to drive turbines and produce electricity.  Including those under construction, there are 475 nuclear power reactors in the world.  The United States, France and Japan have the most; approximately 20 percent of U.S. electricity comes from nuclear energy.

 

Most often cited problems with nuclear power include disposal of its radioactive waste, the extreme consequences of accidents or sabotage, proliferation of nuclear technology and the resultant ability to produce nuclear weapons, and the hazards of uranium mining.

 

However, nuclear plants can also be fueled with thorium, which is even more plentiful on the planet than uranium.  Cost of converting the world’s reactors would not be prohibitive, the element itself is less costly, it produces less waste and contamination, and spent fuel could not be processed into nuclear bombs—Berkley Bedell.

Know Your Coal

Gasoline burned by automobiles puts 1.5 billion tons of CO2 into our air annually but even this does not make them the largest U.S. polluters.  That distinction goes to coal burning power plants, the source of at least 2.5 billion tons of CO2 each year.

 

At the end of 2007 the United States had more coal than any other country—28.6 percent of all proved and recoverable reserves, a total of 267,554,000,000 tons.

 

Grand total in the world is estimated to be 934,196,000,000 tons of which less than one percent is used each year.  Together, the United States, Russia, China, Australia and India have three-fourths of the world’s reserves.  The 1,053,000,000 tons used annually by the U.S. are only .004 percent of all we have; in other words our coal will last us 250 years.

 

As currently produced and used, however, coal is a mess.

 

Air pollution goes hand in hand with burning coal and countries with the most coal have the most pollution.  Seven of the nine most polluted cities in the world are in China and India.  Of the top 10 national polluters, the United States and China emit almost twice as much CO2 as the next eight combined.  Annual emissions of CO2 in Australia and the United States are 10 and 8.2 tons respectively per person.

 

Global warming is the most alarming result of our present use of coal and other fossil fuels but health issues caused by air pollution also are a huge concern.

 

·         Three million persons are killed worldwide annually by air pollution, including 656,000 in China and 527,700 in India.

 

·         Five million persons in the world and 200,000 in the U.S. have pulmonary fibrosis, a lung disease linked to inhaled pollutants.

 

·         Three percent of all U.S. deaths and one million asthma attacks have been blamed on air pollution.

 

·         There is growing evidence of a relationship between air pollution and cardiovascular (heart and blood vessel) disease, America’s number one killer.

 

Sulfur oxides, nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, volatile organic compounds and particulate matter are the principal components of air pollution and all are products of burning coal.

 

The coal mining process itself is dangerous due to poisonous gases, cave-ins and explosions, and destructive to the environment due to loss of vegetation, killing of wildlife and diminished local air quality.

 

Knowing that the present extraction and burning of coal makes it the dirtiest of all fossil fuels, President Barack Obama and others have advocated “clean coal.”  The phrase itself sounds promising and simple but clean coal burning is nothing more than ordinary coal burned more efficiently or with its gases filtered or captured and stored.  Although we have the theoretical basis on which to develop clean coal, we do not have a successful practical application.

Nevertheless, due to its tremendous supply coal is now promoted—even advertised—as the preeminent energy choice for the U.S.—Jim Frost.